Some BJP members are said to have proposed to keep Bangladesh out of the purview of the bill, according to members who attended the last JPC meeting on November 20.

It was the 11th and the final meeting of the JPC as the committee will place the report in the first week of December.

KOLKATA: The joint parliamentary committee (JPC) on the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2016, which seeks to provide citizenship to persecuted religious minorities from neighbouring countries, will submit its final draft on or before December 6. The bill is expected to be tabled in the Winter Session of Parliament, scheduled to begin on December 8.

While major opposition parties like Congress, Trinamool Congress, CPM and Samajwadi Party are likely to oppose the bill both inside and outside Parliament, a section of BJP leaders, mostly from the north-eastern states, including Assam, also want the party to go slow on it. Some BJP members are said to have proposed to keep Bangladesh out of the purview of the bill, according to members who attended the last JPC meeting on November 20.

It was the 11th and the final meeting of the JPC as the committee will place the report in the first week of December. “Looking at the sensitive situation in Assam and the condition of aggrieved Bengali population there, we have suggested to go slow. However, the ruling party at the Centre seems to be impatient and they want to pass this Bill in this session to satisfy their political interest. They have lost considerable votes after implementing NRC and now they want to rescue some support base by bringing this Bill. So, they will place a report on December 6 and will try to push through the Bill in the next session,” Sougata Roy, a Trinamool member in the JPC, told ET.

Passing this bill will maximize the possibilities of large-scale violence in north eastern states, Roy said.

The north eastern units of BJP, mainly the Assam unit, are much averse to the Bill, said a senior member of BJP who was present at the JPC meeting on November 20. “The chief minister of Assam and some senior MPs from the North East are completely opposed to the idea of pushing the Bill through the Winter Session. This is a very complicated process. Even though Mamata Banerjee is trying to stir a Bengal sentiment by putting some dubious data on NRC, we must understand that BJP will not gain from these. We came to power in Assam after toiling for almost 25 years and following NRC we have already lost some of our support base in Barak valley and Brahmaputra valley. What we can salvage through the Bill? We can only rescue some base at Barak valley, while Brahmaputra valley is already for us,” a BJP member said on condition of anonymity.

BJP members also said that TMC members never attended any public hearing in last few years on this.

Another senior BJP MP pointed out that the election in Bangladesh brings more complication to the process. “It looks like a double-edged sword. We are grappling with many issues now. Bangladesh is a friendly nation and implementing the Bill might antagonize Bangladesh. They have elections in December,” he said.

A group of national BJP leaders aims to have the Act in place to salvage the loss of support of Bengali Hindu voters before 2019 election.

“Some BJP members proposed to keep Bangladesh out of the purview. So, what sense does this Bill make then? The Bill is about Bangladeshi migrants mainly. We have said that persecuted minorities need to be protected but there should not be a religious bias. The word should be socially and politically persecuted minority and not religious. We are heading towards a man-made crisis. BJP is trying to communalize this bill, while TMC tries to regionalize this. We are here to save humanity.”

CPM’s member in JPC, Mohammad Salim said that his party has suggested to ‘delink’ the bill from religion and to 'uphold the constitutional value'. “For last two years, we are only debating on this. The government is suffering from indecisiveness. The ruling party in Assam is in bad shape after NRC . Once they said that the members would travel to states and understand the situation. Then they asked to submit memorandum. Now, they are saying that justice could not be done to thousands of such memorandum. Nothing is clear what the government wants.”